November 27, 2013

Regardless of age,
your brain has the ability to make new neurons and construct new neural
pathways throughout your life. Every time you engage in new activities, think
in novel ways, learn a skill or do things differently, new pathways are forged
and your cognitive reserve expands. This process, called neuroplasticity, has
been a revelation in neuroscience.

Numerous studies have
helped us to understand how learning transforms the brain. Take, for example, a
landmark German study of a group of people who had never juggled before. After
giving them three months of juggling training, the investigators scanned the
newly minted jugglers’ brains and found an increase in volume of areas that
process complex visual motion. Although the change was temporary, the study
demonstrated an anatomical modification as a result of learning.

Another study by
German researchers looked at the effect of intense studying on brain structure.
Medical students preparing for their board exams underwent MRI scans of their
brains before, during and three months after they completed their exams. The
students experienced a significant volume increase in various brain regions
including the hippocampus (the brain’s memory center) over time.

And what’s even more
exciting is that three months after they stopped studying for exams, the student’s
hippocampi continued to enlarge. This is thought to be due to the proliferation
of new neurons induced by learning.

Every part of the
brain serves a special function. In recent years, there’s been an explosion of research
in the field of neuroplasticity. Using MRI technology, the brains of athletes,
musicians, video gamers and even cabdrivers have been studied. This has
provided a new understanding of how the brain is shaped by the way it’s
utilized. For example, the scan of an accomplished pianist will show expansion
of the cortical areas associated with finger dexterity while those of
experienced cabdrivers reveal enlargement of regions dedicated to spatial
navigational skills.

Researchers have even
begun looking at how brain structure may be molded by online social networks.
They’ve found that college students with more friends on Facebook had
enlargement of various brain regions, including an area linked with the task of
putting names to faces. This kind of research underscores the fact that the
brain you have at this very moment mirrors the way you have spent your time.
But more importantly, the future structure of your brain is yet to be
determined.

High quality social
connections appear to protect against cognitive decline. Recent studies show a
25 percent reduction in the risk of developing dementia among seniors who
report feeling satisfied with the relationships in their lives. Having an
interesting and fulfilling social life into your golden years is just one of
several factors that may help preserve the brain’s store of knowledge and
memory, a concept known as cognitive reserve.

A robust cognitive
reserve is essential for keeping your mind sharp as you age. One recent study reported
that nearly 40 percent of people who die without any measurable cognitive
deficits have evidence of Alzheimer’s disease in their brains. These include
the hallmark plaques and tangles.

How can this be? We
now understand that some people seem to tolerate the pathologic brain changes
of Alzheimer’s pretty well. It appears that having a well-funded intellectual
savings account somehow compensates for whatever damage has accumulated in the
brain. When there’s a pile-up or traffic jam on your main neural highways,
cognitive reserve serves as an alternate route for information to travel. So,
even if your preferred cognitive route is blocked, you still have a side exit and
smaller streets available to get you to your destination. True, it may take you
longer to get there, but at least you won’t be stuck indefinitely.

Scientists didn’t
always believe there were ways to build up cognitive reserve throughout an entire
lifetime. They used to think the brain behaved like cement: Young, freshly
poured neural pathways could swiftly absorb materials and impressions but
eventually these pathways would become set in stone, hardened and intractable
with age. We now know this is far from true: The brain is more like a glorious
garden, capable of growing, blooming and sending out new roots when the conditions
are favorable. Research has shown that stimulating experiences and new
learning, like sunshine and rain, allow this garden to flourish — and that’s
true whether you are young or old.

November 26, 2013

You
might be a great potential entrepreneur but you still need to spell out exactly
what it is you plan to do, who needs it, and how it will make money. A
good starting point is to look around and see if anyone is dissatisfied with their
present suppliers. Unhappy customers are fertile ground for new businesses to
work in.

One
dissatisfied customer is not enough to start a business for. Check out and make
sure that unhappiness is reasonably widespread, as that will give you a feel for
how many customers might be prepared to defect. Once you have an idea of the
size of the potential market you can quickly see if your business idea is a
money making proposition.

The
easiest way to fill an endurable need is to tap into one or more of these triggers:

Cost reduction and economy. Anything that
saves customers money is always an attractive proposition. Lastminute.com’s
appeal is that it acts as a ‘warehouse’ for unsold hotel rooms and airline
tickets that you can have at a heavy discount.

Fear and security. Products that protect customers
from any danger, however obscure, are enduringly appealing. In 1998, two months
after Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM), one of America’s largest hedge funds,
was rescued by the Federal Reserve at a cost of $2 billion, Ian and Susan
Jenkins launched the first issue of their magazine, EuroHedge. In the aftermath
of the collapse of LTCM, which nearly brought down the US financial system
single-handedly, there were 35 hedge funds in Europe, about which little was
known, and investors were rightly fearful for their investments. EuroHedge
provided information and protection to a nervous market and five years after it
was launched the Jenkins’s sold the magazine for £16.5 million.

Greed. Anything that offers the prospect of
making exceptional returns is always a winner. Competitors’ Companion, a
magazine aimed at helping anyone become a regular competition winner, was an
immediate success. The proposition was simple. Subscribe and you get your money
back if you don’t win a competition prize worth at least your subscription. The
magazine provided details of every competition being run that week, details of
how to enter, the factual answers to all the questions and pointers on how to
answer any tiebreakers. They also provided the inspiration to ensure success
with this sentence: You have to enter competitions in order to have a chance of
winning them.

Niche markets. Big markets are usually the habitat of
big business –encroach on their territory at your peril. New businesses thrive
in markets that are too small to even be an appetite wetter to established firms.
These market niches are often easy prey to new entrants as they have usually
been neglected, ignored or ill-served in the past.

Differentiation. Consumers can be a pretty fickle bunch.
Just dangle something, faster, brighter or just plain newer and you can usually
grab their attention. Your difference doesn’t have to be profound or even high-tech
to capture a slice of the market. Book buyers rushed in droves to Waterstones’
for no more profound a reason than that their doors remained open in the
evenings and on Sundays, when most other established bookshops were firmly
closed.

Before you can manage your own anger, you need to be aware of
what anger is and isn’t. Unfortunately, myths about anger seem to abound. Here
are some of the myths I want to dispel right from the get-go:

Males
are angrier than females. If by angrier you
mean how often people experience anger, it’s simply not true that men are
angrier than women. Surveys show that women get mad just as frequently as men -
about once or twice a week on average. On the other hand, men tend to report
more intense anger, while women tend to hang on to anger longer.

Anger
is bad. Anger serves a variety of positive
purposes when it comes to coping with stress. It energizes you, improves your
communication with other people, promotes your self-esteem, and defends you
against fear and insecurity. (Jesus, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr., were
all angry men — but they turned that anger into social reform that made the
world a better place.)

Anger
is good. When it leads to domestic violence,
property damage, sexual abuse, drug addiction, ulcers, and self-mutilation,
anger is definitely not good.

Anger
is only a problem when you openly express it. Few as
10 percent of people act out their feelings when they get angry. The other 90
percent either suppress their anger (“I don’t want to talk about it!”) or repress
their anger (“I’m not angry at all — really!”). People who express their anger
are the squeaky wheels who get everyone’s attention; people who repress or
suppress their anger need anger management just as much.

The
older you get, the more irritable you are. It’s
the other way around - as people age, they report fewer negative emotions and greater
emotional control. People - like wine and cheese, they do tend to improve with
age.

Anger
is all in the mind. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Emotions
are primarily physical in nature. If anger were only a state of mind, why would
someone say, “I feel like I have a big fist in my chest when I get that angry”?
Believe me, when you get mad, that emotion is instantly manifested in muscles
throughout your entire body, the hairs on the back of your neck, your blood
pressure, your blood sugar levels, your heart rate, your respiration rate, your
gut, even your finger temperature warms up, which is long before you’re aware
of what’s happening.

Anger
is all about getting even. The most common
motive behind anger has been shown to be a desire to assert authority or
independence, or to improve one’s image — not necessarily to cause harm.
Revenge is a secondary motive. A third motive involves letting off steam over
accumulated frustrations — again with no apparent intent to harm anyone else.

Only
certain types of people have a problem with anger. It involves and relates with all types of people — truck
drivers, college professors, physicians, housewives, grandmothers, lawyers,
policemen, career criminals, poor people, millionaires, children, the elderly, people
of various colors, nationalities, and religions. Anger is a universal emotion.

Anger
results from human conflict. This notion
can be debatable. One of the leading experts on anger has found that people can
get angry by being exposed to foul odors, aches and pains, and hot temperatures
where none of which involve (or can be blamed on) the actions of others.